The Challenge of Garveyism Studies

Abstract

The past two decades have witnessed a resurgence of work on Marcus Garvey, Garveyism, and the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) in the American academy. Building on a first wave of Garveyism scholarship (1971–1988), and indebted to the archival and curatorial work of Robert A. Hill and the editors of the Marcus Garvey and Universal Negro Improvement Association Papers, this new work has traced the resonance of Garveyism across a staggering number of locations: from the cities and farms of North America to the labor compounds and immigrant communities of Central America to the colonial capitals of the Caribbean and Africa. It has pushed the temporal dimensions of Garveyism, connecting it backward to pan-African and black nationalist discourses and mobilizations as early as the Age of Revolution, and forward to the era of decolonization and Black Power. It has revealed the ways that Garveyism, a mass movement rooted in community aspirations, ideals, debates, and prejudices, offers a forum for excavating African diasporic discourses, particularly their contested gender politics. It has revealed that much more work remains to be done in Brazil, West Africa, Britain, France, and elsewhere.